Michigan Joins Move to Increase Hourly Wage

For several years, Republicans in states such as Michigan have steered clear of raising the minimum wage. That shifted this week, as the state’s Republican-controlled Legislature approved a gradual increase in the state’s wage, to $9.25 an hour.

The change reflects a national conversation about income inequality, worker pay and economic growth that is bumping up against the reality of practical politics, pollsters and economic analysts said.

In Michigan, where a coalition of labor and community groups had mounted an effort to put a minimum wage of $10.10 an hour on the ballot in the fall, Republican lawmakers joined with Democrats to pass a more modest measure.

After signing the increase in Lansing on Tuesday night, Gov. Rick Snyder, a Republican who had been noncommittal when asked about an increase a month ago, stood beside legislative leaders from both parties and praised the move as a bipartisan compromise.

“I commend my partners in the Legislature for finding common ground on a bill that will help Michigan workers and protect our state’s growing economy,” said a statement from Mr. Snyder, who is seeking a second term in office in November.

As lawmakers in at least 34 states and many cities this year have pondered increases to the wage, the efforts have divided largely along partisan lines. After President Obama’s calls for an increase in the federal minimum wage stalled in Congress, Democrats in politically divided states like Maine and New Mexico took up the idea — seen as a draw for their political bases with midterm elections approaching.

Cities like Seattle and San Francisco, where liberal Democrats are firmly in control, went even further, with local minimum wage proposals that could top $15 or more an hour, more than double the federal minimum of $7.25.

Democratic-held legislatures in states like Connecticut, Maryland and Minnesota have passed increases in recent months. On Wednesday, the Illinois legislature, controlled by Democrats, sent the governor a bill permitting a nonbinding ballot question about a wage increase there; Gov. Pat Quinn, a Democrat seeking re-election in November, said he would sign it.

Yet Republican politicians find themselves in increasingly thorny political terrain. While polls suggest that a higher wage is broadly popular among Democratic voters, Republican voters are more mixed on the subject. And Republican officeholders find themselves trying to balance the views of traditional allies, including business leaders who oppose increases, against public sentiment and efforts, like the one in Michigan, for ever larger ones.

“The economic case for raising the minimum wage is straightforward,” said David Cooper, an economic analyst at the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal research group in Washington. But the political case as suggested by polling data, he added, is mixed, with Democrats overwhelmingly in support of higher minimums, and a only minority of Republican voters in agreement.

That creates an easy path for Democrats, he said — support the higher wage — and a trickier one for Republicans, with some party leaders like Mitt Romney recently suggesting that minimum wages should go up.

The result has sometimes been complicated. Thom Tillis, a Republican candidate for the Senate from North Carolina, said this month that he opposed a federal minimum wage increase, but that state minimum wage decisions were different and “need to be made by the state.”

In Illinois, Bruce Rauner, the Republican nominee for governor, has adjusted his position in various recorded appearances and interviews, suggesting at one point that he favored lowering the state’s minimum wage, then saying he could support an increase.

In Alaska, an initiative on the November ballot would raise the wage to $9.75 by 2016 from the current $7.75. But, surprisingly, Republicans who control the State House of Representatives passed a bill in April that would have accelerated the pace of those increases, with a rise to $9 in July and to $10 on Jan. 1, 2016.

Republican leaders said their bill was good policy for struggling Alaskan families, but Democrats denounced it and helped defeat it in the Senate. They said it was a Republican ploy to pass a measure that could later be amended or repealed, rather than allowing the ballot measure, which would be binding, to proceed.

The tone of mistrust that filtered out from the Capitol in Juneau has since become part of the campaign by backers of the ballot measure.

“Our Legislature can’t be trusted,” said Ed Flanagan, chairman of Alaskans for a Fair Minimum Wage, which pushed to get the initiative on the ballot. “But the efforts to short-sheet us with a bill failed,” he added. He said backers were now hoping for an overwhelming majority in November that would send a signal to lawmakers that they should not meddle with or amend the minimum wage at all.

In Michigan on Wednesday, leaders of a coalition of labor and community groups submitted to the state more than 300,000 signatures on petitions seeking to place the question of a minimum-wage increase — to $10.10 an hour by 2017 — on the ballot this November.

The signatures, gathered over a period of months, were submitted a day after legislators reached their agreement on a smaller increase — to $9.25 an hour by 2018 — and Mr. Snyder had promptly signed it. The fate of the ballot measure is uncertain now, officials said, given that the law it aimed to change has since been replaced.

“We’re in uncharted waters here,” said Danielle Atkinson, a leader with Raise Michigan, the coalition. She described the lawmakers’ move as a mixed bag — disappointing for how it might edge out the ballot measure; rewarding for how it reflected a change in the conversation over minimum wage in Michigan. The state’s current minimum wage is $7.40 an hour.

“This issue would have never gotten anywhere in Lansing if not for our ballot initiative,” Ms. Atkinson said. “They didn’t like our idea, so they were trying to undermine it.”

How the issue may affect elections in the state, if at all, was uncertain. Bill Ballenger, a political analyst in the state, said a major factor in approving an increase had been removing the question come election time.

“They don’t want to have to be carrying the burden of opposition to the minimum wage when the polls show the public supports it,” Mr. Ballenger said. “They’re saying: We’re not going to give the Democrats any leverage at all — no chance to rev up the base.”

Somewhat surprisingly, Mr. Snyder and his re-election opponent suddenly find themselves on the same side of this issue. Mark Schauer, a former Democratic congressman who is opposing Mr. Snyder for governor, months ago advocated a wage increase to $9.25, his aides said, and lauded the increase this week. And Mr. Snyder described the increase as one that would help hard-working residents without harming the state’s economy.

Last month, in an interview, Mr. Snyder sidestepped questions about his stand on raising the wage. “I spend my time on getting people more than the minimum wage,” he said, later adding, “I’m sticking to creating higher-paying jobs.”

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A18 of the New York edition with the headline: Michigan Joins Move to Increase Hourly Wage. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe